SINGLETON, John

Nationality:
American.
Born:
John Daniel Singleton in Los Angeles, California, 6 January 1968.
Education:
Graduated from University of Southern California School of
Cinema-Television, 1990.
Family:
Married Akosua Busia (an actress), 12 October 1994 (divorced, 15 June
1997); children: one daughter, Hadar.
Career:
Director and writer; directed Michael Jackson's video
"Remember the Time," 1992.
Awards:
Jack Nicholson Award (twice) and Robert Riskin Writing Award, University
of Southern California School of Cinema-Television; New Generation Award,
Los Angeles Film Critics Association, 1991; New York Film Critics Circle
Award for best new director, 1991, and MTV Movie Award for best new
filmmaker, 1992, both for
Boyz N the Hood;
ShoWest Award for screenwriter of the year, and Special Award for
directorial debut of the year, ShoWest

John Singleton, who grew up on the fringes of the black ghetto in South
Central Los Angeles, graduated from the prestigious film school at the
University of Southern California to begin his career at an interesting
moment in Hollywood history. For the early 1990s witnessed, albeit on a
small scale, a revisionist revival of the blaxploitation movement that had
so energized Hollywood cinema in the 1970s with its anti-establishment
celebration of African-American ghetto culture. Blaxploitation classics
such as
Superfly
,
The Mack
, and
Coffy
had sometimes glorified the drug dealing, organized crime, and sexual
promiscuity they ostensibly condemned, thereby providing a weak critique
at best of a dysfunctional culture in the process of being destroyed by
middle-class flight, decaying municipal infrastructures, and systemic
racism. The spectacularly successful
New Jack City
, a 1991 film directed by Mario Van Peebles, can be similarly faulted for
an exploitative political rhetoric. It is hardly remarkable, therefore,
that the four-wall exhibition of
New Jack City
proved dangerous for theatergoers and theater owners alike. Gang-bangers
in attendance reaffirmed their commitment to the lawless lifestyle
appealingly depicted on the screen by, in part, shooting up the place and
each other.

Violence also greeted the initial screenings of John Singleton's
Boyz N the Hood
, but this 23-year-old wunderkind had not authored and directed a film
that could be blamed for anything more than depicting, accurately and
movingly, the coming to manhood of a group of young black men in South
Central. Gang life, and the endemic violence and police reaction it
fosters, is hardly romanticized in the film, but pointlessly destroys the
lives of some. Tre Styles is the exception to this iron rule. He is the
only one of the homeboys lucky enough to benefit from a father's
correction and instruction. With his father's example providing an
alternative, Tre chooses to save himself by refusing to go along on a
vengeance-prompted drive-by. Like his girlfriend, brought up strictly by a
respectable Catholic family, Tre escapes the 'hood for the
blessings of a college education. Thus, the film's ideological
center is Tre's father, the aptly named Furious Styles, who
advocates a rigorous program of self-improvement and self-control
(occasionally tinged by Farrakhanesque paranoia) for both his son and
community.

Didactic and overly conventional at times,
Boyz N the Hood
offers more than a political program. The film is also a portrait in
depth, both
loving and critical, of a community in crisis, where almost no one
prospers and where the line between the good and the bad is almost
impossible to draw. A self-made entrepreneur who makes the most of his
hard work, Furious Styles bequeaths to his son—and the
film's audience—hope for the future that depends on
individual effort rather than institutional reform. It is notable in this
regard that Tre's future looks positive precisely because he has
left behind the dangerous South Central neighborhood where he grows up.
With this film, John Singleton established himself as a filmmaker with
commitment as well as cinematic talent. Like Spike Lee's
Crooklyn
,
Boyz N the Hood
adroitly negotiates between commercial demands for engaging melodrama and
the director's desire to deliver a timely message. It was certainly
an auspicious debut.

None of Singleton's next three films has met this very high
standard of accomplishment.
Poetic Justice
is more or less a Janet Jackson vehicle, with the popular singer playing
a homegirl from South Central who takes to the road in an attempt to
assuage the pain of a broken heart and escape the violence of her
neighborhood. In this instance, Singleton's script suffers from a
lack of direction and narrative energy; the result is somewhat unaffecting
soap opera with the beautician heroine, who also writes poetry, hooking up
with a mailman and his daughter after the tragic killing of her boyfriend.
The story finds little of interest to do with the
characters-driven-together-by-fortune structure that it initially
develops.
Higher Learning
, also scripted by the director, suffers from similar problems. It treats
racial and gender tensions at the mythical Columbus U., which is proposed
as a metonymy for American society. Unfortunately, Singleton's
screenplay creates characters who are neither particularly plausible nor
attractive, and the narrative in which they are plunged is needlessly
fragmented and uninvolving. As in
Boyz
, Singleton puts an African-American father figure at the ideological
center of the story, though this character, a rather aloof and prissy
professor of political science, has no real depth. In
Rosewood
, Singleton wisely secured the services of a competent screenwriter,
Gregory Poirier. But this at times exciting and moving re-creation of an
historical event, an anti-black pogrom in a 1920s Florida small town,
still suffers from structural problems: too many main characters; too much
time and energy devoted to setting up the central actions the film will
treat; too much of an emphasis on emotions handled with the predictable
sentimentality of soap opera. In this film, Singleton shows flashes of
directorial brilliance, and it is undoubtedly an improvement on its two
immediate pedecessors. Unfortunately,
Rosewood
demonstrates that as the 1990s ended Singleton had still proven unable to
move effectively beyond the authentic recreations of his adolescent
experience that made
Boyz
such a critical and popular success.

—R. Barton Palmer

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